This chapter considers survey research about white evangelicals’ motives for supporting Israel. It reports on a religious service at a charismatic church that celebrated the emigration of the Jews to ...
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This chapter considers survey research about white evangelicals’ motives for supporting Israel. It reports on a religious service at a charismatic church that celebrated the emigration of the Jews to Israel as hastening Christ’s return. For enormous numbers of born-again Christians, supporting the Jewish return to the Holy Land allows them to join in the unfolding of divine history. Many disavow any intention of hastening scriptural prophecy, however. The chapter discusses another way to speed the end-times: building the Third Temple in Jerusalem. It notes plots to destroy the Dome of the Rock in order to clear the Temple Mount for the construction of the Temple. And it describes the biblically prescribed need for a red heifer to purify workers who would build the Temple. The chapter concludes by questioning the charge that George W. Bush is a Christian Zionist, perhaps even a premillennial dispensationalist, and that his faith shaped his Middle East policies.Less

Prophecy, Policy, and the Unfolding of God’s Plan

Stephen Spector

Published in print: 2009-04-01

This chapter considers survey research about white evangelicals’ motives for supporting Israel. It reports on a religious service at a charismatic church that celebrated the emigration of the Jews to Israel as hastening Christ’s return. For enormous numbers of born-again Christians, supporting the Jewish return to the Holy Land allows them to join in the unfolding of divine history. Many disavow any intention of hastening scriptural prophecy, however. The chapter discusses another way to speed the end-times: building the Third Temple in Jerusalem. It notes plots to destroy the Dome of the Rock in order to clear the Temple Mount for the construction of the Temple. And it describes the biblically prescribed need for a red heifer to purify workers who would build the Temple. The chapter concludes by questioning the charge that George W. Bush is a Christian Zionist, perhaps even a premillennial dispensationalist, and that his faith shaped his Middle East policies.

This ethnographic study takes a unique approach to one of the most contentious issues in the Middle East—the Israeli settlement project. The book’s work intercedes in the conflict between religiously ...
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This ethnographic study takes a unique approach to one of the most contentious issues in the Middle East—the Israeli settlement project. The book’s work intercedes in the conflict between religiously motivated Jewish settlers and their liberal and secular opponents and asks the reader to suspend judgment just long enough to gain fresh insight. The book shows that the intense antagonism between these groups disguises their fundamental similarities and reveals the social and cultural work achieved through a politics of mutual denunciation. While previous studies have examined settlers and other so-called fundamentalists in Israel, this is the first to place radical, right-wing settlers and their left-wing and secular opposition in a single analytical frame, moving between places and across borders, carrying stories, questions, and insights from one side to the other. Based on fieldwork in the settlements of the Gaza Strip and surrounding communities during the year prior to the Israeli withdrawal, the book presents unique ethnographic data and poses controversial questions about the contentious issue of settlement in Israeli-occupied territories in ways that move beyond the usual categories of politics, religion, and culture. It critically examines how religiously motivated settlers think about living with Palestinians, express theological uncertainty, and imagine the future beyond the confines of territorial nationalism. Attending to the complexities of different ways of being Israeli, the book holds up a mirror in which both the liberal Left and the radical Right find themselves reflected in the face of the other. With theoretical implications stretching far beyond the boundaries of Israel/Palestine, the book’s findings shed fresh light on politics, identity among Israelis, and the troubling conflicts in Israel/Palestine and provide both challenges and insight to broader questions at the interface between religiosity and formations of the secular.Less

Joyce Dalsheim

Published in print: 2011-03-18

This ethnographic study takes a unique approach to one of the most contentious issues in the Middle East—the Israeli settlement project. The book’s work intercedes in the conflict between religiously motivated Jewish settlers and their liberal and secular opponents and asks the reader to suspend judgment just long enough to gain fresh insight. The book shows that the intense antagonism between these groups disguises their fundamental similarities and reveals the social and cultural work achieved through a politics of mutual denunciation. While previous studies have examined settlers and other so-called fundamentalists in Israel, this is the first to place radical, right-wing settlers and their left-wing and secular opposition in a single analytical frame, moving between places and across borders, carrying stories, questions, and insights from one side to the other. Based on fieldwork in the settlements of the Gaza Strip and surrounding communities during the year prior to the Israeli withdrawal, the book presents unique ethnographic data and poses controversial questions about the contentious issue of settlement in Israeli-occupied territories in ways that move beyond the usual categories of politics, religion, and culture. It critically examines how religiously motivated settlers think about living with Palestinians, express theological uncertainty, and imagine the future beyond the confines of territorial nationalism. Attending to the complexities of different ways of being Israeli, the book holds up a mirror in which both the liberal Left and the radical Right find themselves reflected in the face of the other. With theoretical implications stretching far beyond the boundaries of Israel/Palestine, the book’s findings shed fresh light on politics, identity among Israelis, and the troubling conflicts in Israel/Palestine and provide both challenges and insight to broader questions at the interface between religiosity and formations of the secular.

This chapter considers a manifesto, anchored on binationalism, as a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. After 100 years of conflict, there is no end in sight to the war between Israel and ...
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This chapter considers a manifesto, anchored on binationalism, as a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. After 100 years of conflict, there is no end in sight to the war between Israel and Palestine; the only visible change in the Middle East is deterioration. The small piece of land containing the names Israel and Palestine has become an intense critical mass containing all the tensions between East and West, between North and South, between religions, and between religious and secular thought. In the symbolic realm relations are much more complex: they are not about the balance of power, financial profit, or control of land, water, and natural resources. In this realm one also has to consider overt and covert theological structures. This chapter argues that binationalism is the only living alternative to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, “perhaps the only possibility for a new place, a new beginning and a new language, the only possibility for Israel–Palestine, for the Middle East, and maybe for the entire world”.Less

A Manifesto for the Jewish-Palestinian Arabic-Hebrew State

Aloni Udi

Published in print: 2011-10-04

This chapter considers a manifesto, anchored on binationalism, as a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. After 100 years of conflict, there is no end in sight to the war between Israel and Palestine; the only visible change in the Middle East is deterioration. The small piece of land containing the names Israel and Palestine has become an intense critical mass containing all the tensions between East and West, between North and South, between religions, and between religious and secular thought. In the symbolic realm relations are much more complex: they are not about the balance of power, financial profit, or control of land, water, and natural resources. In this realm one also has to consider overt and covert theological structures. This chapter argues that binationalism is the only living alternative to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, “perhaps the only possibility for a new place, a new beginning and a new language, the only possibility for Israel–Palestine, for the Middle East, and maybe for the entire world”.